


The Fleming boy

by Naraht



Category: Return to Night - Mary Renault
Genre: F/M, Gen, Jealousy, Kid Fic, Oedipal Issues, childhood illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 05:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1887213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Julian is faintly jealous of his own son, and vice versa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fleming boy

His mother had always seemed at her best - at her most maternal, one might say - when he was ill. At six he had had the measles - in retrospect, one realised, rather seriously. Through the haze of fever he remembered the murmuring voices, his mother saying _cancelled all my patients_ and _why didn't you say something sooner, Julian?_ and (this last to him directly) _oh, my poor darling_. 

It was usually his father who put him to bed, delegating the task to the nanny only when rehearsals or performances interfered. Now it was his mother who sat with him for what felt like forever - in reality not over three weeks - through the illness and the resulting pneumonia, dosing him faithfully with the best antibiotics that 1952 could offer. He remembered the coolness of her hand on his forehead and, when his breathing finally eased, the comforting, familiar scent of her perfume and the cigarettes that she smoked.

His recovery had been a triumphant one. Only many years later did he discover how close he came to dying. For him, once well enough to enjoy the distinction of being ill, the triumph had been being home from school and having his mother always near him. Once he was out of danger she became more distracted, sitting and idly stroking his head with one hand while reading from one of her medical journals.

"Is that about measles?" he asked, lifting his head from the pillow.

"No, my dear," replied his mother after a short pause, "it's about hysterectomies."

"Oh." He searched for inspiration. "But are you going to write me up now?"

Much of his mother's day was a mystery to him. He had been inside her surgery once or twice, and knew what it was to visit the doctor, but the hospital was a world beyond his ken. He was not altogether sure that he could imagine his mother cutting people open and fixing up their insides - as she had explained that she did - but the subsequent 'writing up' often took place in her study at home, and therefore this was an activity more easily grasped.

She laughed. "I hadn't planned on it, Oliver. Would you like me to?"

"Please," he said, as winsomely as he could manage. "If you wouldn't mind."

This earned him another laugh and a tousle of his hair. She was silent for a little while. Then she began.

"Oliver Fleming, aged six, previously healthy apart from the usual childhood ailments, presented with fever, malaise and cough. Upon examination he was found to have developed both conjunctivitis and the classic erythematous rash spreading from his face to the back of his neck - which, I may say, his father ought to have noticed. His temperature was 103°F..."

One might have said that it was not a patch on his father's bedtime stories, which were engrossing enough when read out of a book, and utterly enchanting when delivered out of the imagination. Father and son lost themselves together in the thickets of the imagination, occasionally until well after the decreed hour for sleep. But even though his father's tales often included Oliver himself as the protagonist, the story that his mother had unfolded offered both the mystery of portentous words and the charm of immediate truth. 

For the first time in his short life he had felt himself, not merely loved, but worthy of his mother's professional attention. He dropped off to sleep, content and gratified, as she talked quietly to him of his excellent response to the standard course of penicillin.

***

Next morning he was allowed to get up for the first time since his illness had begun. He ate his toast and drank his milk at the nursery table in front of the fire, with his mother sitting in the big armchair and looking solemnly on. It was enough to tire him. After breakfast, instead of getting down to play with his trains - a consummation of which he had dreamt all the days of his convalescence - he found himself climbing into his mother's lap.

A big boy of six, already at school, could succumb to such a childish joy only while in the grip of convalescence. Oliver was very glad to have the excuse. His mother did not reproach him; instead she stroked his hair and allowed him to rest his cheek against her breast. He leaned sleepily against her, held safely in her arms, and thought that nothing could be more delicious than this. Though it was only nine in the morning, he began to drift off again.

"Oh, my sweet," said his mother, so softly he had to strain to hear. "My dear, sweet, clever boy; my one and only. You can't think how worried I was about you."

This roused him to curiosity. "Why were you worried?" 

She gave a little start, as though she had not known that he was listening. 

"Because I love you, dearest."

"How much?"

His father was prone to extravagant metaphors about the moon and the stars, and capable of spinning them out to a length that left Oliver giggling and charmed rather than contemplative. His mother spoke of love more rarely, but when she did it had a satisfyingly personal simplicity.

"Better than anyone else in the world," she said.

He sensed the shift in his mother's attention a moment before he knew the reason for it; then he looked up to see his father standing in the open nursery door. He had just been tying his tie; it hung loosely around his neck, half-knotted and forgotten. He ran a hand through his dark hair.

"Julian, darling, I thought you were off at rehearsal."

"Not for a few minutes yet. I shall be out from under your feet soon."

"You're not under my feet at all."

"It rather looks like it."

There was a long, continuing silence. His parents were still looking at one another. Oliver, feeling himself no longer to be the centre of the conversation, began to play with his mother's hand, turning the diamond ring round and round on her slender finger.

"Don't do that, dearest," she said. "It pinches."

"When I was little I used to be so glad to stay home from school," said his father wistfully. "My mother used to let me lie in her bed in the afternoons and she would tell me the most wonderful stories. Hours and hours..."

"You wouldn't have been at all glad when you had measles."

"I suppose I wasn't; I must have been too young to remember."

Mother sat forward a little, bringing Oliver reluctantly upright. "I was just going to ring the _locum_. There's no reason why I shouldn't go in this afternoon for a few hours; he's well enough for Nanny to sit with him now."

Doubtful that Nanny was a suitable substitute, Oliver essayed a pitiful cough, but to no avail; it was clearly not the right sort of cough to be written up.

"I'm glad," said his father, and smiled not at Oliver, but at mother. "I'll go down with you. Now, Olly, I suppose we had better get you back to bed."

It was terrible to be lifted, unresisting, like a much smaller boy, from his mother's warm lap. His father carried him easily across the room and tucked him into bed. Oliver turned his face to the wall while he was brought his favourite teddy bear and a glass of water and the bell to ring if there were anything he needed. He had a distracted kiss and a pat from his father but it was his mother's attention that he wanted, and he could tell that she was now in the sort of mood where she would meet any objections with her usual dismissive briskness.

"Have a little rest," she said. "And be good. Nanny will come along to see you soon."

Oliver could not remember a moment in his life when he had felt less like being good, but he was still too weak to make a fuss. Clutching his teddy bear ashamedly, he watched his parents leaving the nursery together.

Just before they disappeared down the hall, he saw his mother reach out to ruffle his father's hair.

"Darling," she said, " _please_ tell me you weren't jealous..."


End file.
